


The Flight of Icarus

by theatricalmess



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005), Rose Tyler - Fandom, Sherlock - Fandom, The Tenth Doctor - Fandom, crossover - Fandom, female original character - Fandom, original character - Fandom, wholock - Fandom
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-04
Updated: 2021-02-17
Packaged: 2021-03-15 14:21:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29190747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theatricalmess/pseuds/theatricalmess
Summary: Finding long-lost siblings isn't always what it's made out to be, and the Doctor and his sister, the Wordsmith, find that out the hard way. A subsequent capture threatens to send both siblings to their knees. The Wordsmith must make a choice, a choice that might forever separate from her brother and bring their childhood crashing down around their ears. London waits for her below, but the sky calls from all around her. The Doctor waits with her before a yawning chasm of impossible choices, future over past and past over future.If there was ever a time to be a sociopath, it's when faced with a choice that will rip your heart apart no matter what you do. But isn't that hard when you have two hearts?
Relationships: Sherlock/Original Character, Tenth Doctor/Rose, The Doctor & original character sibling
Kudos: 3





	1. Sibling Reunion

Space’s silence could not be broken. Not a sound would be made, remaining forever untouched and still. No voice would sing, no ship’s weapons or engines would scream. No TARDIS _vworp_ could break the beauty of the silence of space. 

But inside the TARDIS, there was plenty of sound. A crew of three manned the TARDIS, the third member a recent addition. The Doctor’s companion hung back as the Doctor and the new arrival, only just picked up from a planet called Iitarus Moores, smiled and jabbered away in Gallifreyan, their words musical to Rose’s ears.

Watching with equal parts amazement and wariness, Rose Tyler studied the woman the Doctor seemed to know. She was beaming at him, gripping his shoulders so tightly her knuckles had gone white. Her eyes, as clear and glowing amber as the center of the Andromeda galaxy, shone with tears. She reached up and touched his face in wonder, a few singing words coming from her. Rose remembered the Doctor mentioning he had a wife, a family. Could this woman be part of that family? Could she be the wife he left behind? A bitterness crept in Rose’s stomach as she messed up the Doctor’s already messy hair.

A choked sob came from the Doctor; then he pulled the woman into a tight embrace.

“Doctor,” Rose said, her stomach starting to feel oddly sour, “I thought you were the last Time Lord.”

“I am, Rose,” he said, still holding the woman. His eyes had only opened a smidgen to see her. 

“Then how does she know Gallifreyan, too?”

The woman stepped away from the Doctor. She studied Rose with a smile on her face. “You have not told me who your lovely companion is, Doctor,” she chided. “How terrible your manners are! My dear, I am the Wordsmith. And you are?”

“Rose Tyler,” she said, extending a hand to the woman. The Wordsmith came a few steps forward to take Rose’s hand with dainty fingers and shake it. “How do you know Gallifreyan?”

“I was born on Gallifrey, at the same time as this oaf,” the Wordsmith said, bumping hips with the Doctor. “He’s a few seconds older than me, though, and he likes to hang it over my head.” She waited, then started to smile as Rose figured it out.

“You’re his sister,” she realized. She cornered the Doctor. “Why didn’t you ever tell me you had a sister?”

“For her protection,” the Doctor said. “She survived the Time War only because no one knew she was still alive.”

“I survived the Time War by not being a Time Lord, brother,” the Wordsmith added.

“No one knows she’s alive, now that all our fellows are gone,” the Doctor continued. “That’s why I don’t speak of her. Why you’ve never seen her before, or traces of her in the TARDIS. We see each other maybe twice every regeneration.”

“So you regenerate, too, even though you’re not a Time Lord?” Rose asked.

The Wordsmith shook her head. “I regenerated once in my whole life. This is the second form I have ever had. While I keep my longevity and youth, I don’t change form when my cells regenerate themselves to heal.”

“How are you siblings if you’re not both Time Lords?” Rose asked. 

The TARDIS shuddered, sparks flying from the ceiling. The time machine tilted, groaning, and all three gave a scream or shout. Rose was flung across the TARDIS and slammed into the wall. She slumped to the ground and didn’t move or make a sound.

“ROSE!” the Doctor yelled, lurching toward her and stumbling.

“Take care of the TARDIS, Ten!” The Wordsmith stumbled toward Rose from where she’d been thrown as her brother worked to figure out what had happened.

“How did you know which regeneration I’m on?!” the Tenth Doctor demanded. “You haven’t seen me since my seventh!”

“I’m your twin sister, I’m always going to know!” she shouted, crouching beside Rose. “She’s breathing. Unconscious and bleeding, but she’ll be alright.”

“Can you wake her?”

“In a minute,” the Wordsmith murmured. “I just have to give her some of my blood. It has to mix before she can wake.” She put her fingers to Rose’s head, testing her compatibility with the powers running in the Wordsmith’s veins. 

“No, don’t!” the Doctor yelled. “It could _kill_ her, she’s just a human!”

“She’s a human that took the full force of the TARDIS into her,” the Wordsmith said, amazed. “You let her do that? Also I saw you during your ninth regeneration, the first few days after it happened, remember? I recall you didn’t…” She trailed off, staring at Rose. “You didn’t…” 

“I didn’t exactly _let her,”_ the Doctor yelled. “What was wrong with my ninth regeneration?”

“Nothing, it’s just...you didn’t have that whole shock of messy hair.” She waved in his general direction, toward the messy hair in question.

“Oh, shut up!”

“I’m not critiquing you!” the Wordsmith yelled. She pulled a knife from the belt around her waist. “Hold the TARDIS as steady as you can, I need to get my blood.”

Grunting, the Doctor stretched his leg across to a lever and a hand to a button. The TARDIS’ shuddering decreased but didn’t stop entirely. “That’ll have to do!”

“I can work with it,” the Wordsmith decided, putting the knife to her skin. She drew the knife across her wrist, running along a vein, and blood unlike any other welled up. She pressed her fingers to Rose’s temple. _“Wake.”_

Rose’s eyes snapped open. Her chest heaved, pupils pinpoints, body trembling. She opened her mouth, but before she had a chance to speak, the Wordsmith pushed her wrist to Rose’s mouth. _“Drink,”_ she ordered, and Rose was not foolish enough to disobey.

“Thank you,” Rose rasped when the light returned to her eyes and her strength returned. “I think.”

The Wordsmith smiled. “Yes, I rather feel like a vampire’s meal whenever that happens.”

“Then why do you do it?” Rose asked, her voice gaining more strength. “Whatever that was that you did.”

“What she did was to save your life,” the Doctor said as the TARDIS gave another shudder. “Her blood has powers incomprehensible.”

The Wordsmith rolled her eyes. “He over exaggerates. My blood does many things, yes, but they can be understood. Eventually. With an open mind.” She offered Rose a hand and hauled her up when she took it. Rose dusted herself off and the two women carefully picked a path back toward the Doctor as the TARDIS groaned to a halt.

“Thanks, Wordsmith,” Rose said.

“You have drunk my blood, Rose,” the Wordsmith said. “Call me Nashira.” The name she gave sounded musical on her lips. “Ten does, anyway. Or he always has. Ten, has your name for me changed?”

“No.”

“Good, I rather like Nashira.”

“Nashira,” Rose repeated.

“Like the star in the Capricorn constellation, yes,” the Wordsmith agreed, but she was frowning softly. 

“What is it, what’s wrong?” Rose asked.

“Say Nashira again,” the Doctor instructed. The syllables of the name were musical coming from him, too, each crafted with a note different from the last.

“Nashira,” Rose said again, more nervous this time.

The Doctor blinked. “That doesn’t sound right at all!”

“Why...why doesn’t it sound right?”

“Nashira is too close to my Gallifreyan name,” the Wordsmith explained. “It’s a name meant to be an echo of my name, not exactly the same but close enough that any other Gallifreyan would recognize the name as mine. It’s odd for us to hear you say the name.”

“I…” Rose didn’t know what to say. Was she supposed to apologize for not being like them? For being human? “Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize, Rose,” Nashira said, her name a melody on Nashira’s lips. Rose frowned; it was strange to hear her name as if in a song. “See how that sounds? That feeling of oddness to a name is exactly what my name sounds like without song.”

“What should I do, then? Sing your name?”

Nashira smiled. “No, call me Nerissa. That’s more of a human name, but closer to Nashira.” And it was true; _Nerissa_ did not sound sing-songy like _Nashira_ did. The TARDIS gave another unhappy lurch, an ear-splitting screech emitting from it. “Ten, what the _hell_ is going on?”

“Where is it taking us?” Rose demanded.

“We...we haven’t moved from a fixed point in space,” the Doctor said, astounded. He grabbed the console, shoving his glasses on his face. “We’re under attack!”

“Who’s attacking us, Doctor?” Nerissa demanded. He didn’t respond. “Doctor!”

The doors of the TARDIS shuddered violently. “Doctor, something’s trying to get in!” Rose backed away from the door as the wood groaned and shuddered. The TARDIS shook violently, throwing the Doctor back. With an odd ‘eeeeerrrrrkkklluggg’ sound, the Doctor hauled himself onto his feet and back to the TARDIS’ console.

“Come on, talk to me! Tell me who’s here!” he shouted, smacking the computer’s screen. It fizzled out, a pixelated image of space appearing and fading away instantly. “No no no no no! That’s not helping at all!” The TARDIS’ lights flickered into a deep, bloody color before going out entirely with a series of _pop_ s that sounded much too close to lightbulbs bursting.

“Doctor?” Rose asked, losing her footing again. She hauled herself up by a railing. “Nerissa?”

“I’m here!” Nerissa said, but her voice sounded far away and the breath had been knocked out of her.

“Doctor?” 

He didn’t respond.

“Doctor!”

“Brother!”

Silence. But this silence was not beautiful, as space’s silence was. It was heavy, tense, and terrifying. Death lurked in its corners.

_“Doctor!”_

“Here…” His voice was weak and dim, a sound without air. “Here.” A blue light glowed far too brightly in the darkness as the sound of the sonic screwdriver pierced the icy quiet. Rose stumbled through the dark until she found him, huddled by the console. He groaned as she helped him to his feet. 

“Nerissa?”

“I’m making my way to the screwdriver’s light,” she said, stumbling as her foot caught on one of the floor panels. “Ow…”

“Alright?” the Doctor called.

“Yes, yes, fine,” the Wordsmith panted. She limped into the screwdriver’s blue glow and the console began to glow a dim red, as dark as the blood Nerissa had shed for Rose only moments before.

“Doctor, what is it? What’s attacking us?”

“Whatever it was, it’s not attacking us now,” the Doctor said, studying the screen. His glasses were skewed oddly on his face; Rose fixed them. “I’m not getting any good readings… Something must be jamming the system. Nothing jams the system this effectively, though.” He seemed to realize. “Oh…”

Nerissa looked sick. “But they’re gone. They were destroyed, weren’t they?! You were there for the end of it, weren’t they destroyed with our people?”

“They keep popping up all over,” the Doctor said grimly. “Rose and I have seen them across the cosmos.”

“What, Doctor?” Rose asked. “Which monsters are we fighting now?”

_“WORDSMITH! WORDSMITH! DOCTOR, YOU WILL GIVE US THE WORDSMITH!”_


	2. The Wordsmith

Nerissa had squeezed her eyes shut, breath coming in short gasps. Rose had gone stiff, eyes locking on the TARDIS’ doors, from which the mechanical voice emanated. Only the Doctor did not react to the voice. 

“You know,” Nerissa began, struggling to keep her voice level, “I had hoped I would never hear a Dalek’s voice again.”

The Doctor spared her a single glance. “What makes you think the Wordsmith lives? She died in the Time War!”

“The Wordsmith is with you!” the Dalek insisted. “We have tracked her over the centuries. She is here, Doctor, and you will hand her to us!”

“How many are there?” Rose asked.

“Impossible to tell, they all sound the same,” the Wordsmith breathed. 

“Nashira, were you tracked by any Daleks?”

“Not that I knew,” she said. “I was careful not to be seen. I stayed to my temporary worlds.”

“The Wordsmith is _dead!”_ the Doctor snapped. “I watched her fall and get trampled. There was hardly anything left of her for me to bury!” This was true, but only partly. The Wordsmith that had fallen in battle had been a near-perfect duplicate of the Wordsmith, an illusion designed to die in the Time War so she could escape at her brother’s insistence.

“No!” The Dalek at the door—or perhaps the entourage with it—pounded on the door. Wood groaned. “The Wordsmith survived! Regeneration is possible for your kind, Doctor!”

“She wasn’t a Time Lord!” Ten’s face contorted in rage. “She was the Wordsmith, the Storyking! She was the maker of worlds and the seamstress of words! She was not meant for the Time War and you knew it when you attacked her!”

“Give us the Wordsmith and we shall let you live, Doctor!”

“Oh, no! You would kill me whether I had her to hand over or not!”

“Give us the Wordsmith and we shall let your companion live, Doctor!”

The Doctor’s face contorted. He glanced for half a heart beat toward Rose, his precious Rose. The glance did not go unnoticed by either woman. “Oh ho! Smart change. But you are not in any position to make _demands,_ Dalek! You are outside my door. Perhaps when you have breached my TARDIS you could lay down your demands.” Smugly, he turned to the women. “They won’t get in. The TARDIS is unbreachable by the likes of them.”

“Doctor—”

The door burst open, hanging off hinges and spraying splinters of wood everywhere. Nerissa had the good sense to drop beneath the floor. Rose rushed to stand over the panel, hiding her as best as possible from the three Daleks who came through the door. 

“Well. That’s never happened before,” the Doctor said, but he’d lost his confidence. A hand went to his hair, tugging as he thought desperately what to do to make them leave. “Daleks in the TARDIS! Well, Rose. What should we do about that?”

Rose shook her head. “What’re you asking me for?”

The Doctor frowned. “Because I’m out of ideas!”

“The Doctor is never out of ideas,” a Dalek said. If the voice it had could be anything but metallic and menacing, the words might have been a compliment. The Doctor took it as such, a brilliant smile curling across his lips. 

“Oh, yes, thanks for reminding me of that!” he said. “Well! How did you phrase it…? Oh, yes. Leave my ship and my companion and I will let you live, _Daleks!_ Rather a weird thing for a Dalek to say, Rose, eh?”

“Er, yeah. Normally they’re going on about extermination.”

“Ah, yes! That’s right! Have you given up exterminating people? Taken up baking perhaps?”

“Wordsmith! Give us the Wordsmith or you shall be exterminated! Exterminate! Exterminate!”

The Doctor frowned. “Oh, you had to go back to that.”

_“Wordsmith! Give us the Wordsmith!”_

“Oh, I’ve _told_ you! She’s gone!”

And she was. As the argument between her brother and the Daleks continued above, Nashira crawled away from the panel Rose stood above and around the console. She wriggled through tight spaces and rolled away from her brother’s protection. She stopped three times and left wires dangling in her wake. Just a few feet away from the Daleks, she poised her hand above her stomach, gathering strength. The muscles in her fingers tensed as she drew on her wordsmithery. She felt as her imagination and power over words, and thus illusions and appearances, changed the clothes she wore, creating another facet of herself. Now appearing so similar to the Time Lords of old, clothed in a garment of red and gold with a headdress of her own design on her head, Nashira drew a weapon from her belt—a gun, the very weapon her brother would not use. She slipped a sonic device from her pocket into her other hand. 

_“I don’t have the Wordsmith!”_ Ten sounded nearly hysterical, not noticing as Nashira lifted herself up from the floor and stood up behind the Daleks. _“She’s dead! You killed her in the Time War!”_

_“GIVE US THE WORDSMITH!”_

“What use is she to you?” Nashira demanded, raising the gun.

The three Daleks whirled. “WORDSMITH! WORDSMITH! WORDSMITH!”

“What use am I to you?” Nashira’s finger tightened on the trigger of the pistol. The Doctor’s face shattered, horror dawning.

“Your weapon will do nothing to us,” the Dalek in front said. “Your bullets shall bounce from us onto you.”

“And something tells me you don’t want that, if you’ve chased me through time and space to find me. So you won’t want me to shoot. Answer the question, Dalek. What use am I to you?”

“Nothing that you will understand with your finite mind.”

“DALEK! I may not be a Time Lord anymore, but I was born one. Do not dare to assume I am some meager minded creature. What. Use. Am. I. To. You?”

Silence followed. The three Daleks remained still and silent. 

“The Wordsmith will restore us!” one said at last.

“The Wordsmith will not!” Nashira grinned. “And because I will not, now you will leave. I am of no further use for you and you only taint my brother’s precious TARDIS. Buh-bye!”

“We will not leave.”

“Yes you will.” To emphasize the point, the Wordsmith aimed the pistol toward the leader’s viewport eye. 

“Your weapon will do nothing!”

She laughed. “Oh, you think so? This pistol was made from a Dalek gunstick. Don’t make the mistake of thinking you will be immune to your own weapons. That’s what got me killed in the first place.”

For the first time, the Daleks hesitated. “You will come with us, Wordsmith!”

“What for? I don’t desire to, so why should I?”

“We will exterminate the Doctor and his companion!” One of the Daleks turned back to the pair, gunstick switching between the two. “Exterminate! Exterminate!”

Nashira rolled her eyes. “You know, that gets really old really quickly.” But the weapon in her hand was inching to the ground as she eyed Rose, noting the way she looked at the Doctor.

“Wordsmith,” the Doctor said slowly, “don’t go with them.”

“Do I have much of a choice? I can’t let them kill you. If you can’t think of yourself, think of Rose. Think of me. Have you any idea how it would feel if I was the reason you died? Because I wouldn’t give myself up to a Dalek?”

_“Please.”_

“Doctor, there isn’t another option!”

“There is _always_ another option! Remember what I told you? Back before the Time War, back on Gallifrey. When you gave up the power of Time. When the Time Lords began to call you the Storyking. What did I say to you then?”

Jaw tightening, the Wordsmith said, “You told me to look at my loss of power from a different angle. I was now less powerful than you or the Time Lords, but I was less dangerous. And infinitely more valuable to them with my wordsmithery.”

“Exactly,” Ten breathed. “Another angle, another perspective. There’s another option, Wordsmith.” Deliberately, his gaze roved over the Daleks and then to her, landing on the pocket within her velvet robes. The sonic mascara in that pocket seemed to burn against her leg. “Imagine what we could do… Two different kinds of sonic…” 

“There is one sonic!” the Dalek in the front squealed.

“Anything could happen.” Ten ignored the Dalek currently throwing a fit, swiveling between the siblings. 

“We have no idea what reaction it would cause,” Nashira whispered. “It’s too much of a risk.”

“Oh, come on, what’s life without risk? We’re Gallifreyans, Wordsmith. It’s our job to be risky.”

“If this goes wrong, I will hate you forever.”

“You said that when I introduced you to the Master when we were kids.”

“And then it did go wrong.”

“But do you hate me?”

“Yes.”

“Well…”

“Doctor?” Rose tugged on his sleeve. “What’s that third Dalek doing?”

All three look at the Dalek she pointed to. 

“Ah, yes! That’ll be me!” The Wordsmith flipped her sonic in her hand, slipping the gunstick pistol back into her belt. “You see, hiding under the floorboards gave me an idea. I may or may not have rigged a few electrocution systems designed to get beneath a Dalek’s casing. I developed them halfway through the Time War, Rose. They would’ve made a wonderful difference if the Time Lords had actually let me use them. Instead, they made me dismantle them.” A rogue grin crossed her face. “Wonderful that I left the parts in the TARDIS, eh?”

“But...what’s it doing?” Rose asked, frowning at the shaking Dalek. It seemed to be having a spasm, sparks flying. Strangled sounds as if it was trying to speak came from it as its metal casing shook and clattered apart. With a loud bang!, the domed head burst apart and into flame. Rose jumped back as it flew toward her, the two Gallifreyans ducking.

_“Wordsmith! NOW!”_

Nashira tugged her sonic mascara from her pocket, unscrewing the top and pointing it toward her brother’s screwdriver. The air grew charged and electric as blue and yellow sonics met. Without speaking or thinking, the Doctor and Wordsmith flung the energy build up toward the two remaining Daleks. 

_“EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE!”_ Blue shots fired from the two Dalek gunsticks. 

“ROSE, DUCK!”

Switching sonic mascara for her pistol, Nashira fired shot after shot, each beam hitting the domed head of the Daleks. It hardly made a dent in their metal. The sound inside the TARDIS grew louder as blasts were fired and the Daleks screeched their fury. 

“I THOUGHT YOU SAID THOSE WORKED ON DALEKS!” the Doctor shouted.

“I MAY HAVE OVER DRAMATIZED THAT!” Nashira shouted. “BUT THEY _DO_ WORK ON THE DOMES AND UNDERSIDES OF THE DALEKS, IT JUST TAKES A BIT!”

“EXTERMINATE!”

“YOU SAID YOU STAYED AWAY FROM THE DALEKS AFTER THE TIME WAR!”

“I _DID!_ I LEARNED THIS TIDBIT FROM FUTURE JACK HARKNESS.”

“YOU’VE MET HIM TOO?!”

“EXTERMINATE!”

“YES!”

“EXTERMINATE!”

“DID HE FLIRT WITH YOU?”

“YES, WHY DO YOU ASK?”

“HE FLIRTS WITH EVERYONE, DOESN’T HE?” Rose exclaimed from her place behind the console, where she desperately pressed buttons, hoping they would do something.

“EXTERMINATE!”

“ROSE, TAKE THIS!” Nashira flung her sonic mascara at her; Rose caught it and pointed it at the nearest Dalek.

“EXTERMINATE!”

“NO NOT THAT BUTTON, ROSE, THAT’S THE EJECT BUTTON!” The Doctor sonicked a Dalek; it screamed and blasted him, missing only by inches as he leapt aside. “ANYWAY, I ASK BECAUSE THE NEXT TIME I SEE HIM, I’M GOING TO KILL HIM. REPEATEDLY.”

“DON’T WORRY, I DID IT FOR YOU,” Nashira promised, firing at the same Dalek. At last, the domed head cracked. It shrieked about extermination. “HE DIDN’T DARE DO IT AGAIN AFTER I MADE HIM A TEMPORARY EUNUCH.”

“WHY ONLY _TEMPORARY?”_

“DOCTOR—”

_“EXTERMINATE!”_

_“OH SHUT UP, WILL YOU?”_ A well-aimed blast from the gunstick pistol blew off the Dalek’s head. “ONE LEFT!”

“REINFORCEMENTS ON THE WAY, REINFORCEMENTS ON THE WAY!” the Dalek croaked, its voice growing weaker. Several quick blasts, both sonic and not, cut through the metal and at last quieted the thing.

“What did you think of Jack?” Rose asked with a giggle, hopping down from her vantage point. She handed Nashira the sonic mascara as she shoved her gunstick pistol back into its holster.   
“Are you _giggling_ about Jack?” the Doctor said, alarmed.

“Ah, well. He’s a piece of work, that one. Being a temporary eunuch put him in his place, though. Wish you could’ve seen how humiliated he was. Took him a few deaths to get it back.”   
The Doctor nearly choked on his own tongue. “I _really_ didn’t need to know that.”

“More pressing matters—that Dalek said reinforcements were coming,” Rose said.

“Not were, are,” Nashira corrected. “They’ll be here soon.” She toed the remains of the Daleks until she found a blinking panel. “The tracker. With this, even escaping in the TARDIS won’t work. They’ve got a tracker on us.”

“Can’t we just...throw it out into space?” Rose asked.

The Doctor shook his head. “Dalek technology’s too good for that. We throw it out, it’ll just come back. Rebound tech.”

The Wordsmith frowned. “It’s a more advanced version of my creation. That’s rude. They took my design!”

_“You_ invented this?” Rose asked, jaw hanging open.

Nashira blushed. “Sort of. I can invent things from words, make them real. The trackers were one of those things.”

“So you make fictional things...non-fictional?”

“Pretty much, yes.”

“The day the fans find you scares me,” the Doctor muttered, crouching to examine the tracker. “I estimate we’ve got...twenty minutes at most before they get here. And that’s if they weren’t tracking the Daleks already.” He glanced up at Nashira. “What do they want you for?”

The Wordsmith had resorted to pacing. Every few seconds she scowled, batting at air as a new idea came to her, then dissipated like smoke. “Could be anything, really. Possible leverage against you, but now that you know they’re after me that sort of defeats the purpose…”

“Maybe they plan to torture you for information on the Doctor,” Rose suggested. “You’re his sister, you’d know more about him than anyone else except himself.”

“More than any companion…” The Doctor murmured. “Nashira, is it possible… Is it possible they want you to...rewrite their existence?”

“Meaning…?”

“Give them life, again. Make more Daleks.”

“They could do that on their own.”

“Not as fast as you. You can create things from words in seconds. All you would need to do is write details and descriptions of the Daleks down, use that as your base, and multiply them. Then they’d have an arm of Daleks at their disposal. It might take years otherwise for them to create as huge an army as they could with you.”

The Wordsmith considered. Then, in a movement very similar to the Doctor’s own, she wiped a hand across her face, jaw clenching. “You know, there are times like these where I wish you weren’t so damn smart,” she muttered at last. “You’re probably right. I’m to create more Daleks.” She kicked the Dalek remains in front of her, fingers flexing and grabbing at air.

“Imagine that,” the Doctor whispered. “A Gallifreyan being forced to resurrect the creatures that destroyed her people.”

“The Time Lords were _not_ my people—”

“They were the closest thing you had,” the Doctor reminded her, a bit waspish. “There are no other Wordsmiths. You were born a Time Lord, and you gave it up, but you had it once. That makes you one of us.”

Nashira shook her head. “The only thing that matters now is you, brother. You’re the last Time Lord, so if you’d like to make me an honorary one for your purposes, fine. But I won’t accept the whole of the Time Lords as my people, not after what they did to me during the war.”

“What happened during the war?” Rose asked. 

Nashira shook her head, unable to speak. The Doctor said it for her: “Toward the end of the war, Time Lords grew...dark. They grew wary of Nashira, and her gift. She was dangerous, according to them, even though her powers could do nothing to them, not with how they had guarded her gifts and limited her training. It nearly killed her, in the end. That’s why I had to...had to get her out of the war.” The Doctor stood and squeezed Nashira’s hand. She refused to meet his gaze. “During the war, the Time Lords used Nashira’s powers to destroy Daleks. She can write things into existence and imagine their reality, so, similarly, she can write them out. Obviously she couldn’t write out an entire race, so she would only write out a few. But it took strength. Lots of strength, strength she didn’t have because they wouldn’t let her train and focus her powers into something good for fear she’d use it against them. 

“The President insisted she be made useful before and during the Time War. So she was given the title of the Warmonger, just before the war broke out. During the war, he made her the Admiral. She controlled huge fleets that would meet with the Daleks again and again, obliterating whatever she could. The President and his council decided that she could be of more use, and that’s when they decided she would learn to write out Daleks. She tried. It didn’t work as well as they’d hoped, so they imprisoned her deep within Gallifrey until she had written her way out.”

“Written her way out?” Rose touched Nashira’s shoulder, but she gave no sign that she even noticed the gesture. “With paper and pen?”

The Doctor glanced at his sister. Her face was carefully blank. “Nashira had to eliminate her guards one by one, every day, until she was strong enough to do it without writing it, until she could just picture the words in her mind and force them upon her victims. But she didn’t have paper in the underground cave system… She had to write on walls. Carve with her nails.” Rose shuddered and the Doctor looked ill at the thought, but the Wordsmith hardly moved. “When she had gotten to the surface, she was thrust back into the war effort immediately. The Time Lords either didn’t notice or didn’t care that she was sapped of strength. By the time she was returned to her fleet, she could hardly stand. Still, they made her erase Daleks, one by one. Until she inevitably burnt out.” He dropped his sister’s hand and strode for the console, casting worried glances at the two women.

“Burnt out? Do I want to know?” Rose asked.

“Something like her version of the damage before regeneration.”

“I became a husk,” Nashira whispered, far away in her mind. “My bodily functions slowed down. My left heart stopped. My right one was hardly functional. I couldn’t move, couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep, couldn’t stay awake. But my mind...the deeper I went inside myself, the more I could do. It triggered what I began to call the Relapse, where I lost myself entirely to the thing inside my brain, the thing that could only kill and wipe away, just like the Time Lords wanted. 

“But I was dying, and the Doctor knew it. He visited me as often as he could, talking to me, trying to nurse me back to proper health. In the dead of night, right as I was about to die, he spirited me away. He took me to a galaxy halfway across the cosmos. The planet was called Elpicksis. The whole planet was orchards, rows and rows of fruit trees that extended across every speck of land the planet contained. It was by the pomegranate groves that I woke up a few days later. I knew I didn’t have much longer, so I used the last of my strength to create an emergency life-line. The pomegranate seeds would sustain me, keep me alive and able to access my power. Before I used the last of my life and power to create them, I’d ordered the Doctor to force feed them to me when I had created them and had altered my body to accept them as healing nutrients, the way a Time Lord’s body accepts regeneration.

“I was seconds from death when the first seed touched my tongue. I knew what it was, somewhere in the back of my mind, even though I was fading fast. So I ate it, even though the rest of me screamed to give up. It restored me. Just a single seed. I ate enough of them to replenish my power. But I couldn’t go back to Gallifrey, not without a way to stop myself from losing myself again. The pomegranate seeds would bring me back when I was on the brink, but they wouldn’t help me keep my sanity. 

“But we were on a planet full of orchards. I took every seed I could find and made something out of them; orange seeds for grounding my sanity, apple seeds to stave off both life and death (essentially a coma), kiwi seeds for limiting my power, dragon fruit seeds for enhancing it. Then we went back to Gallifrey and I threw a mango at the President.”

“You threw a _mango_ at him?” the Doctor asked, astonished. “I didn’t know that!”

Nashira grinned. “Every sister must have her secrets.”

“You don’t have that one now,” Rose laughed.

Nashira winked. “I have plenty of others.”

“Got any more Dalek-defeating secrets?” the Doctor asked. “We’ve got eight more coming. They’re only about five minutes away.”

“Can you do the thing where you write them out of existence? Like you did in the Time War?”

“The whole point of that story was that it could kill her!”

“No, no, I can,” Nashira promised. “As long as you have paper, I can write it out and it won’t sap my energy too much. I’ve had practice in all the years I’ve been away from the Time Lords.”

Rose dug through her pockets until she found a notebook and pen. “Here! Sorry, it’s covered in lint.”

Nashira didn’t bother brushing the lint off. Instead, she sat down right where she was and got to work. “Eight Daleks, you said?”

“Yes.”

“Anything special about them?”

“Uh...no?”

“That’s not very helpful, Doctor!”

“No, not that I can see!”

“Good!” She started to write. Rose leaned over, watching her. Everything she wrote was in circular Gallifreyan, lines and symbols creating words in a language only the Doctor had used in many millenia. Rose could almost feel her body hum with the weight and importance of the dead language. 

“Circular Gallifreyan?” the Doctor asked, glancing at the book. 

“It’s faster than English,” she muttered.

“Even after all these years?”

“I wrote in this language for years. So do you, judging by the amount of sticky notes across that console covered in circles.”

“Half the time I think he does it so I can’t read them,” Rose said.

“That’s generally the point of writing in a language no one can read,” Nashira said, glancing up. “But when it comes to us, there’s something specific about it. We remember the things written in circular Gallifreyan better. And it’s a bit like getting home back.” She stood up with a page covered in circles. She hurried to the monitor and finished a final circle, smirking with satisfaction as the Doctor gave a whoop—one of the Daleks frizzled out into nothing on the screen. 

“Only seven more to go!” the Doctor cried.

“And it can go faster now. Doctor, copy that page, all but the last symbol, and I’ll be able to wipe them out all the same.” Her eye caught on one piece of paper taped to the screen. “Doctor, is this a _love letter?”_

Ten turned red. “Put that back!” 

“You wrote a _love letter_ in _circular Gallifreyan?”_

Rose grinned slyly at Nashira. “What, so the Doctor’s no better than a lovesick teenager?”

“Apparently so!” Nashira laughed.

“We have more things to discuss than my miserable love life,” the Doctor snapped.

“Oh, so it’s miserable, is it?” Rose said, laughing. The Doctor turned a deeper shade of red.

“Daleks, remember?” he shouted, pointing at the screen. “Talking about me isn’t going to make them go away. If it did, I’d never stop talking about myself.”

“You don’t stop talking about yourself,” the two women said, then grinned at each other.

_“Nashira!”_

“Oh, yes, yes, I’m working on it!” She copied down her first writing as the Doctor grabbed another sheet of paper and started again. She finished the symbol on both papers and two more Daleks blinked out of existence. Before the first of them even reached the TARDIS, she wrote them all out of existence.

“That’s really cool,” Rose murmured, lifting one of the Gallifreyan-covered pages. “Scary, but cool.”

Warning alarms blared. The Doctor ran to the screen. 

“Bad news,” he said, looking up. “We’ve got twelve more.”

“I can’t get rid of all of them,” Nashira said uneasily.

“As many as you can. The fewer we face, the better,” the Doctor said and got back to work. 

But they had only managed to erase three more Daleks before they reached the TARDIS and banged through the door for a second time. 

“I really wish they’d stop ruining my door,” the Doctor grumbled unhappily. “I’m going to have to repaint it.”

“Didn’t we have more pressing matters?” Rose reminded him. 

“EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE!”

“Where is the Wordsmith?”

The Doctor pushed Nashira behind him, squeezing her hand. “You can’t have her,” he said savagely.

“You will give us the Wordsmith, Doctor!”

“I won’t,” he hissed. 

“Brother,” she pleaded. “Let me handle this.”

“WORDSMITH!”

“No, I won’t let you,” the Doctor protested. “I can’t. I can’t lose you, too.”

“It’s me they want,” she insisted. “If I go with them, they can’t hurt you.”

“But they can hurt you,” he whispered.

_“Give us the Wordsmith!”_

“I won’t let them. I still have my seeds. I always have my seeds. I can survive.”

“There’s too much risk!”

“You were just saying our lives are all at risk!” Nashira said savagely.

“As your older brother—”

_“We’re twins!”_

“I’m fifty-three seconds older than you,” he reminded her loudly. “So as your older brother, I am telling you that you can’t go!”

_“EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE!”_

“You don’t happen to have a few more bombs or whatever those things were rigged, do you?” Rose asked as the Daleks started to come closer. 

“I...no. Not where they are, anyway. There’s another one under the Dalek rubble but I can’t get to it now. Detonating it won’t help anything.”

_“DOCTOR! Give us the Wordsmith! She will make us new!”_

“Make you _new?_ What the hell does that mean?” Nashira demanded. The Doctor clapped one hand over her mouth, pulling it away only when she didn’t do anything else.   
Ten pulled out his sonic screwdriver, still holding Nashira’s hand. “You’re not having her.” His voice had become a snarl.

“You do not decide her fate,” the Dalek said. “Release her or be exterminated.”

“Ha! See? You don’t control my fate, _brother!_ Oh. Is a Dalek agreeing with me?” Nashira frowned. “Is it too late to change my mind?”

“No. Stay,” Ten pleaded.

“They’ll kill you. _Both_ of you!” Nashira squeezed her brother’s hand. “Do not make me see you die.”

Ten’s mouth trembled as his oscillated between two choices, neither good. He glanced between his sister and the Daleks, his jaw tight. Nashira could hear his teeth grinding. His hand tightened around hers. “Nashira,” he whispered.

“I’ll be careful,” she promised. 

“Please,” he begged, hugging her. Rose squeezed Nashira’s shoulder, slipping the notebook from before into Nashira’s hand. She, in turn, shoved it into her pocket.

“I’m to go with you, then?” the Wordsmith asked dryly. “How am I to get wherever you take me? I don’t breathe space.”

“Our ship will arrive,” the Dalek said. It turned back to the door, waiting. Nashira remained beside her brother and his companion, squeezing each of their hands.

“Please tell me you have a plan,” Ten whispered.

“Of course I have a plan.”

“Can I know the plan?”

“Nope. Speaking the plan is a terrible idea. My captors could overhear.”

“We are not your captors. You have agreed to come of your own free will.”

Nashira nodded toward the Dalek who spoke. “As I said.”

Grumbling unhappily, the Doctor scowled at the Dalek in the door and the eight behind it in the darkness in space. “You better come back to me. I want to travel the stars with you when it’s safe, Wordsmith. I want to show you so many things, so many places. Rose, you wouldn’t be upset if my sister traveled with us for a little while, would you?”

“Not at all,” she promised, though there was a bit of a hitch in her voice. 

“Please be careful,” the Doctor whispered as a ship loomed out from the darkness. 

“I promise, I’ll be fine.” Nashira squeezed his hand, then Rose’s, then stepped forward. “I hope you don’t plan on making me travel through space like my brother, I can’t do that.”

“The Doctor will bring the TARDIS to our ship to deposit the Wordsmith with us.”

Rage contorted the Doctor’s features. “I will not!”

“Doctor, please,” Nashira whispered. 

“Fine,” he spat. The doors slammed shut, the airlock sealing properly again, and he flipped several switches as the Dalek watched. The TARDIS’ _vworp_ filled their ears, cutting off only when the ship had reached the Dalek ship. The Dalek pushed the doors open.

“The Wordsmith will follow,” it ordered.

She rolled her eyes. “The Wordsmith is following,” she said sarcastically.

“Be careful!” the Doctor yelled as she stepped out of the TARDIS.

“I’m always careful, Doctor!” the Wordsmith replied. She followed the Dalek down the hall. Halfway down, four more arranged themselves around her, as if they were a personal guard. The Doctor watched his sister disappear. 

“She said she’d be careful, Doctor,” Rose said, coming up next to him. She took his hand. “Nerissa’s going to be okay.”

“That’s the problem,” the Doctor said. “She’s never careful. Nashira has never been careful in all her life.”

“I’m sure that’s an over exaggeration,” Rose said.

“Well. Only a little bit of one.”

“She’ll be alright, Doctor,” Rose said. “Now let’s get out of here before they decide they want you in their prison, too.”

“That’s what worries me…”

“What?”

The Doctor looked at her, closing the door and wrapping an arm around her shoulder. “The fact that they haven’t come after me yet.”


	3. A Really, Truly, Terrible Plan

The thing about Nashira’s plan was that it was either incredibly genius or incredibly stupid. She made lots of plans like that, but normally she had the Doctor to knock sense into her when her plans were destined for failure.

Being marched, in a way, through the ship by five Daleks gave Nashira plenty of time to regret every innate detail of her plan—mainly due to the fact there _were no innate details._ She had a broad idea that may or may not fail spectacularly and no backup plan or team. Her hands were tied even more than they’d been when she’d run into Captain Jack Harkness in a space bar where her head was wanted by fourteen assassins, though they thought her name was Guinevere Readsere, and he had still been annoyed with her for cutting off his anatomy the time before. How she’d gotten out of that, she wasn’t quite sure. She’d spent most of that escape thrown over Jack’s shoulder, half-dead and unable to get to her seeds.

Nashira couldn’t get to her seeds now, or to the notebook Rose had given her. She’d altered her gown to hide her pockets, just in case the Daleks decided to search her. It was a simple trick, where she left her pockets in a Void Space between reality and her temporary or permanent world creations. She thought of it as her storage locker. Her belt was hidden there, too, beside many of her best weapons and tricks. 

Everything Nashira did was magic, according to her. The Doctor preferred to have a sciency explanation for things, but if Nashira could leave it as mysterious as possible, she would. 

To test the Daleks, Nashira lifted a hand to her hair, scratching her head. The instant she moved, four gunsticks were pointed at her. “Easy! I’m just scratching my head! What, you think I could make a weapon from a bobby pin or a strand of hair?”

“We have heard much about your prowess,” the Dalek said, “from those in the Time War.”

Nashira smirked. “Ah. You’ve heard of me _from_ them, eh? Of course you did! Had you been there, had you faced me, you would not exist.”

“There remains no reason to trust you.”

“Daleks don’t trust.”

“Correct.” The Daleks returned to formation and continued marshaling her down the hallway. 

Knowing they feared her was a benefit. She could most definitely use that to her advantage… Nashira tucked the information away to be picked over and analyzed when she had more information to store with it. 

The ship was nearly soundless, only a soft hum permeating the filtered air. Flexing her fingers, Nashira made mental notes of every discernible feature she could find. It was unlikely she’d be able to escape this way, but it was worth a shot. Her experience in the Time War enveloping her, Nashira took stock and examined the Daleks and their ship. She saw no weaknesses of the Daleks that she had not already exploited in the war, and their ship seemed to be just as iron-shod. If her plan worked, however, it would be unlikely she’d need to make a desperate escape. 

Abruptly, the Daleks halted. Eying the seemingly blank wall they’d stopped at, Nashira wondered how many other secret doors she’d been marched past and how many Daleks could have been behind them.

A rush of steam that came out in a _hiss,_ the door opened with a quiet _click_ as it rolled up through the top of its frame. 

“You will walk forward,” the Dalek behind her said when Nashira’s body locked up and refused to move. “The Cult of Skaro waits inside.”

_The Cult of Skaro._ Her heartbeat quickened, panic freezing in her veins. She’d heard of them, faced them. The tortures they could administer… Nashira could still hear the screams of her fellow Gallifreyans, innocent people slaughtered in the Time War. Decades of hunting the cult, researching the group of four Daleks her brother had thought to be a myth, had exposed Nashira to their cruelty and their ways, entirely different from the rest of the Daleks.

Dalek Sec and his three cronies did not answer to the Dalek Emperor. They were unorthodox in every way, attempting to further the Dalek cause. They tried to make the Daleks better by making them stronger and more ruthless, giving Daleks new routes to survive everything they could stumble across. The Cult of Skaro were the strategists among Daleks, meant to get inside the enemy’s head and defeat them with ease.

Nashira had had a close brush with the Cult of Skaro after the Time War. She’d gotten away without them noticing her in the unnamed sector of space by slipping into a temporary world that bridged her from the unnamed sector and back to her brother. Nine hadn’t understood why she’d been so shaken up when she ended up in the TARDIS with him in 1706; he’d brushed it off, assuming her unease came from the fact she’d just traveled through three different sections of the Void. Nine had scolded her thoroughly for creating a temporary world that stretched her beyond her limits, but Nashira hadn’t had the strength or willpower to tell him that Daleks still roamed, not when he was so fresh from the war. She knew he would go after them—and she knew it would get him killed. So she’d kept quiet, let him scold her, and had journeyed with him for a month. Then she’d moved on to hunt the Cult of Skaro through time and space. 

But seeing Ten now, with his Rose, a girl he was so clearly taken with, Nashira regretted not telling him. 

Wondering whether her escape had been as clean as it had seemed at the time, Nashira obeyed the Dalek prodding her in the back with a gunstick. As much as she did not want to see the Cult of Skaro, she still did not want to die by Dalek gunstick. 

“The Wordsmith is here, Dalek Sec,” the Dalek who had been leading the procession said. It moved to the side as the black Dalek turned to face its Gallifreyan prisoner.

“How did you survive the Time War?” Dalek Sec demanded with no prelude.

Nashira rolled her eyes. “Oh, come on, do you Daleks not have any other way of greeting? You’ve said the same thing to my brother at least a thousand times by now.”

“I have not encountered the Doctor.”

“I meant Dalek kind as a whole.”

Dalek Sec didn’t seem to know what to make of her. It stared at her for several long heartbeats before inching closer. It moved slowly, as if it knew how dangerous the Wordsmith was, even unarmed and in a dress, surrounded by at least twenty Daleks. 

“I took down several of your Daleks, you know,” she said casually. “Erased them. They’re not even atoms now. Just a memory put down on paper.”

“Daleks do not feel loss.”

“Oh, of course not,” Nashira agreed. “Still… Losing eleven Daleks… Eleven is quite a number, isn’t it? Especially when it comes to you, Dalek Sec. You knew what I was capable of when you sent those Daleks to me, yes, but I don’t think you were _quite_ prepared for what destruction I can bring. You weren’t aware, were you, of how much the loss of _eleven Daleks_ would affect some grand scheme. In fact, you didn’t even think of it? Why? You underestimated me in every degree. My advice to you? Don’t do it again.”

“Daleks do not take advice from Time Lords!” Dalek Jast interrupted. 

“Good thing I’m not a Time Lord, then.”

“How can you be the sister of the Doctor if you are not a Time Lord?” Dalek Caan demanded.

Nashira rolled her eyes. “Is this going to come up _every damn time_ someone finds out we’re siblings? Honestly! _Time Lord_ is not a _species,_ it’s a _rank._ You of all people should know that! You fought a bloody war with them!”

“The Doctor considers you one of his own,” Dalek Sec said. “You are a Time Lord to him. You are precious to him, just as his lost people are.”

“I’m not a Time Lord, regardless of how my brother thinks of me,” Nashira snapped. “So, what? Is this whole thing a way to get at my brother? If so, why didn’t you just _steal him when you stole me?”_

“You will make us new.”

“And what, exactly, does making you _new_ mean?”

“The Daleks must adapt to survive,” Dalek Sec insisted. “We must create ourselves anew. You, Wordsmith, will give us new forms and multiply our ranks.”

_“Why_ would I do that? Dalek Sec, do the math! I just destroyed eleven Daleks. I erased them from existence! I made them a memory! There is nothing you could do to force me to create new Daleks. I can endure it all, I promise you.”

“No Gallifreyan can endure everything.”

“The Time War made a monster out of me,” Nashira growled. “You can torture me. You can threaten my death. I will not make a sound and I will not bring your precious new Daleks to life.”

“It is not you we must torture, Wordsmith. Your capture is torture enough for our true prize.”

Her stomach seemed to shrink to the size of a pebble. “If you think my capture will bring my brother to you, you have made an incredible oversight, Dalek Sec. My brother and I have not seen each other in decades. I mean nothing to him. Only the capture of a companion could elicit such a reaction from my brother. You will not have him through me.”

Dalek Sec only stared at her. The three others—Dalek Caan, Dalek Jast, and Dalek Thay—moved closer, one prodding me in the back. I smacked the gunstick away and the creature shrieked, “EXTERMINATE!”

“The Wordsmith will be brought to the lab,” Dalek Sec ordered. “She will create our new race. The Doctor will come for her.”

“He won’t,” Nashira said grimly as she was marshalled away from the Cult of Skaro. Worst of all, her words were lies. Her plan depended entirely on her brother’s soul. If he did not love her enough to come after her, Nashira would waste away on the Dalek ship, never to escape.

|||

Gaze distant and unfocused, Ten sat dejectedly alone on the grate floors of the TARDIS. His face was fixed in a look of self-loathing and disappointment, his mouth a flat line, his eyes vacant of any joy. 

The room within the TARDIS Ten had wandered to the moment they’d left the Dalek ship resembled the beginnings of a shrine. Jars of vibrant red dirt and golden light, paintings of burnt orange skies and setting suns, of sunlight setting leaves shining silver. A snow globe of sorts. Scraps of faded crimson velvet and golden tassels and embroidery. 

A shrine to Gallifrey, but only at first glance.

There was a picture by Ten’s feet. Before his sister had given up being a Time Lord, before she’d sacrificed that power, she had made a camera of her own, combining her wordsmithery with time. She’d done it many times. It was only after the Time Lords realized she was creating small paradoxes here and there that would, in the future, vex archaeologists that she had sacrificed her power. It was with that camera she’d conjured up that she had captured their childhood, even long after she’d sacrificed her powers over time. The camera had also found its place in the Doctor’s memorial, sitting atop a jar containing a golden sunbeam.

In the photograph, there were three people. Two young Time Lords, one Wordsmith. The camera in the hands of a duplicate of one of them, waxy and lifeless, very much unlike the person she was modeled after. Nashira hung upside from her legs on a tree branch, the Doctor reaching up to her with a grin on his face. Sitting with his back to the tree was the Master, their childhood best friend. They’d been teenagers.

The Doctor didn’t touch the photograph again, even as his gaze dipped down to it. He blinked at it, fading into his memory. _“Nashira!” He clapped his hands to his sisters shortly after the click of the camera. Nashira closed her fingers around his wrists, gripping him with enough tension for his wrist bones to grind and pop against each other. “Ow.”_

_“Hold tight and I’ll pull you up!” she said. The Doctor nodded, curling his fingers around hers. With a slight grunt, she hefted him up onto the branch with her. Somehow she managed not to flash him or the Master. He awkwardly fanagled himself to sit beside her, though his legs were dangling down rather than his head. “Do you want to come up, Master?” Nashira asked._

_From the ground, the Master plucked a book that had been lying hidden in the grasses and weeds. “I’d rather read.” He propped the book open on his knees, drawing them close to his chest, and settled himself into the book. The Doctor traced the small paths made in the tree’s bark by small creatures that lived in the tree, humming softly to himself. It was his thoughts he hummed aloud, but as his lips did not form the Gallifreyan words, it was hard for anyone to guess what he was thinking in totality._

_“You don’t mind if I sing, do you?” Nashira asked the Master after he’d flipped several pages._

_Slowly, the Master looked up. He glanced at his page number, then closed the book and leaned forward on his elbows. “If you’re going to sing, I am going to listen.” Everyone on Gallifrey knew the Wordsmith was an excellent vocalist. The President reasoned it was because of her wordsmithery. She hadn’t been taught any language but Gallifreyan for a long time, so she’d had to make sure every sung syllable was perfect, or her worlds tended to go the wrong way and collapse._

_“Will you make a world out of it?” the Doctor asked eagerly. He’d seen her make a world once; the Master had seen it happen twelve times, though all but two of those times had been accidents and three of them had happened when she could still create terrible paradoxes._

_The Wordsmith tapped her finger on her lips, debating. “That depends,” she decided. “If I decide I like the song, I will make a world from it.”_

_“Temporary or permanent?” the Master asked._

_“Also depends.” The Wordsmith swung herself upright and leaned against the trunk of the tree, stretching her legs onto the branch. The Doctor leaned over and poked her feet, and she drew them a few inches out of his reach._

_When Nashira started to sing, both of the young Time Lords forgot their names and almost everything about themselves. Music was tied to Nashira the way time was tied to them, because every person and every world had a song. She could hear them, sing them, write them. This song was a new one, full of high and melodious notes that sounded like a heavenly chorus come to sing for them and them alone._

_It was amazing, and the Doctor knew it, how Nashira’s voice could go from one to a host of voices as she grew stronger in her song. It was as if angels sang with her and encouraged her to keep singing and building, building and singing._

_The Doctor didn’t recognize the language his sister sang in; neither did the Master. It was a language of her own, created solely for the purpose of making temporary worlds that would contain things and places no one could guess._

_A series of sweeping low notes bridged two measures of quick high notes to another five measures of notes steadily climbing the scale._

_The Doctor almost asked her to make a world out of the song. It was too beautiful to pass up. But he didn’t dare open his mouth to interrupt her song. The lure of her voice was like a siren’s, except it didn’t lure the deepest desires of his heart. It lured the imaginings the Doctor didn’t know he’d ever had. Likewise, the Master watched Nashira in a trance, his mouth forming the word ‘Wordsmith’ every so often with a look of wonder fixed upon his face._

_Deep down, the Doctor felt something stirring. It was as if Nashira had woven pieces of him into the song and made him a part of the world she envisioned in her head. The Doctor desperately wanted to see it now._

_Nashira did not once open her eyes. She sat absolutely still, except for the fingers that twitched in her lap as if weaving together strands of imagination and words and melodies. But when she at last finished, the song fading out more than stopping suddenly, no world had appeared, no tear in the fabric of reality to lead from Gallifrey to a temporary world for them to run amok in._

_The Wordsmith sat with her eyes closed for several long minutes._

_“Why didn’t you make a world out of that?” the Master asked at last to break the silence._

_She opened her eyes. “That song shall one day be a person, I think. They’re just not ready yet.” Her gaze had misted over. “I’ve never felt that music before. I’ve never...made a person.” She frowned again. “Actually, I’m not entirely sure I made her. I think I just...gave her her fate.”_

_“Who?” the Doctor asked._

_Nashira studied him and her gaze was like fire that burned, seeing through his soul. Then she at last said, “Her name shall be Donna.”_

“Doctor?” Rose. She was far away from him, but close enough to disrupt his premature mourning. Still, he remained seated before his memorial.

“I’m here, Rose,” he said, barely raising his voice. She still found him. When she did, she sat down on the floor next to him. She didn’t speak; she only took his hand and leaned on him. She waited for him to talk.

The Doctor leaned forward and rearranged a framed black-and-white photo of two suns in the daytime sky. A line divided the picture and revealed three moons in a night sky. That had been the first temporary world Nashira had ever created. She’d made it permanent when the Doctor had admitted it was his favorite of her first five worlds. Last he knew, it still remained within her reach, wildlife from Gallifrey safely living in the system. It was doubtful he or Nashira would visit it again. 

In fact, it was doubtful Nashira would visit _anywhere_ again.

“I let them take her, Rose.”

“She told you to let her go, Doctor.” She sounded tired. Ten wondered if she was tired of him and his moping or if the unexpected meeting with the Daleks had sapped her strength.

“I’m her brother,” the Doctor whispered, his stress and worry for the sister that was almost certainly dead rising. “It’s my job to protect her. That’s why I got her out of the Time War. To protect her!” 

“What she said she can do, the seeds and words and stuff...she’s more than capable of protecting herself, Doctor. She disintegrated all those Daleks! I’m sure she can do it to a few more.”

“She can’t obliterate an entire ship of Daleks with just paper and pen, Rose,” the Doctor sighed. “She doesn’t have enough strength for that, even if she ate all the seeds on that stupid planet. Nashira’s strong, but she can’t wipe out enough Daleks to escape without it being noticed, all at once or over time.” He squeezed his hands together. “I… She’s not going to survive, Rose. Not alone. I just sent the only family I have left to her death.”

“Aren’t I family?” Rose asked.

“Yes, but… I meant…” The Doctor looked both embarrassed and ashamed. He curled his fingers into fists. “I just want my sister back, Rose. I haven’t had time to know her since before the Time War. During the war, she was a different person. And I’ve changed so many times. Every regeneration is different, and she suffered so much in the war. I don’t know who we are anymore. Rose, I’ve lost my _twin._ And I don’t know...how to get her back.”

“Yeah, but see—you’re the Doctor,” Rose reminded him. “You always think of something.”

“I’m out of ideas,” Ten said glumly, drawing his knees to his chest and resting his head on them. 

Rose took his hand. “Tell me about her,” she urged. “Tell me what you remember of her, from before the Time War. Tell me what you did. Tell me about this...this shrine and the pictures and people in it.” She squeezed his hand when he did not speak. “Tell me, Doctor.”


End file.
